News in Brief: A National Roundup

Father Charged With Theft in N.H. Residence Case

A New Hampshire man who sent his four boys to schools outside the
district where they lived has been charged with theft by deception and
faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

The indictment accuses Paul Dutile of giving officials of the
Pemi-Baker Regional School District the false impression that the
Dutiles already lived within district boundaries. It says he owes more
than $1,000 in tuition.

Mr. Dutile enrolled his sons in the Pemi-Baker schools at the
beginning of the 1995-96 school year when the family lived in
Bridgewater, which is in the Newfound Regional district. The family has
since moved to Plymouth, inside Pemi-Baker lines.

Mr. Dutile, a barber who also owns some apartments in Plymouth, said
he has already paid about $12,000 in tuition and still owes about
$6,000.

"We did not set out to deceive the school," Mr. Dutile said in an
interview, adding that the Pemi-Baker district's sports program is what
attracted them to the school system.

John True, superintendent of the 2,500-student Pemi-Baker district,
said the school system hired an investigator to find out where the
family lived and then told Mr. Dutile repeatedly to pay the tuition or
remove his children.

Student With Midol Returns

Nine days after she was suspended for having Midol tablets in
school, a 13-year-old honors student from Fairborn, Ohio, returned to
class last week after her father agreed to send the teenager to a
drug-evaluation program.

Erica Taylor, who accepted a package of the over-the-counter
menstrual-pain medication from another student last month, was
disciplined under the district's drug and alcohol policy.

The policy states that all students must go to the nurse's office if
they need medication and that they must have a parent's permission.

The 8th grader from Baker Junior High School would have faced an
80-day expulsion if her parents had not agreed to send her for a
chemical evaluation, district officials said.

Joy Paolo, a spokeswoman for the district, said the rules were
necessary to shield the 6,200-student district from legal
liability.

Fla. District Sues Architect

The Broward County, Fla., school board is suing a local
architectural firm, blaming it for leaky roofs and other problems with
nine schools it designed in the early 1990s.

School officials say the cost of school repairs will be in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"There are classrooms that are not usable or only partly usable,"
said Robert Manne, a lawyer for the Broward district.

A lawyer for the Miami Lake architectural firm of Shrum, Ali &
Associates has notified the district that the company will countersue,
claiming that the accusations are "slanderous and malicious."

"We've asked the district to show us what went wrong, and I'll be
more than happy to negotiate," said Khaled Ali, the firm's president.
"They haven't done that."

Study Cites Smoking Dangers

Even a few puffs on a cigarette each day can stunt a child's lung
development, a study published in The New England Journal of
Medicine has found. Girls tend to be more vulnerable to the effects
than boys are, even though boys tend to smoke more cigarettes, said the
study, conducted by researchers at several Boston-area hospitals.

Young women may have increased sensitivity to smoking because their
air passages tend to be more susceptible than those of boys, said the
researchers, who studied the effects of smoking on more than 10,000 10-
to 18-year-old boys and girls over a 15-year period.

The study's results are yet another reason to urge young people not
to start smoking, the researchers said. Among smokers in the United
States, 71 percent reported that they sampled their first cigarette
before they turned 19, notes the study in the journal's Sept. 26
issue.

Students Get To Sleep In

The Edina, Minn., school district has pushed back the starting time
for its high school in response to research about adolescents' need for
more sleep.

This year, classes at Edina High School start at 8:30 a.m., rather
than 7:25 a.m. School ends at 3:10 p.m. instead of 2:05 p.m.

The switch was prompted by the Minnesota Medical Association, which
in 1994 wrote to every district in the state to publicize research
showing that adolescents need more sleep than children or adults.
("Too Little, Too Late," Oct. 11,
1995.)

Cutting back on sleep to get to school early, the group warned,
could lead to sleep deprivation and interfere with learning. So far,
Edina officials say, theirs is the only district in the state to heed
the doctors' advice.

Vt. Town Fights for Tuition

A Vermont town that has proposed paying tuition for students to
attend religious schools will ask a superior court this week to force
the state education department to release $170,000 in state aid.

State education officials decided over the summer to withhold the
money following the proposal by the Chittenden school board to give
parents the option of sending their children to parochial high schools,
according to William J. Reedy, the department's deputy commissioner.
("Vt. District Provides Latest Test in
Battle Over Religious Vouchers," Sept. 18, 1996.)

Following a longstanding practice in Vermont, the town, which has no
high school, pays for its roughly 95 high-school-age students to go to
other public or private nonsectarian schools.

Late last month, Chittenden voters rejected a proposed $1.8 million
school budget for the third time.

Judge Rejects Little Rock Bid

A federal judge has rejected a bid by the Little Rock, Ark., school
district to be released from court oversight of its desegregation
efforts.

Faced with the loss of special state desegregation subsidies next
year, the 24,500-student district had argued that it had met most of
its obligations under an agreement approved by the federal court in
1989.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright essentially concluded that
almost wasn't good enough. In a ruling late last month, the judge said
the district had fallen short in "many aspects of the plan."

District officials said they may ask for a new evidentiary
hearing.

Coca-Cola Doubles Gift

The Coca-Cola Co. will double the endowment of its foundation to a
total of $50 million in a display of renewed support for precollegiate
and higher education.

The Atlanta-based soft drink giant pledged in 1989 that it would
contribute $50 million to education during the 1990s. Earnings from the
endowment enabled the company to reach that goal last year.

The Coca-Cola Foundation has given grants to more than 200 colleges
and universities. Many have supported partnerships with schools and
teacher training.

Teacher Says Speech Curbed

Claiming she was fired for inviting students to a rally sponsored by
a left-wing political group, a New York City high school teacher has
filed a lawsuit accusing the city's school board of violating her right
to free speech.

Mary Lonergan, a 45-year-old social studies teacher at Prospect
Heights High School in Brooklyn, told a local newspaper that she lost
her job because she invited students on a trip to the annual May Day
rally in Washington.

The trip was sponsored by the Progressive Labor Party Flatbush Youth
Club, a self-described left-wing organization.

David Golub, a spokesman for the board, said Ms. Lonergan was denied
tenure, not fired. He said the district does not use political or
religious criteria to assess performance.

Ms. Lonergan, who filed suit last month, could not be reached for
comment.

Spec. Ed. Student Plays Ball

A 20-year-old high school student with Down syndrome played in his
first interscholastic football game last week after the Colorado High
School Activities Association relaxed its age restrictions.

The governing body last month amended its bylaws--which allow high
school athletes to compete until age 19--to permit Gabriel Lane, a
senior at Greeley Central High School, to compete in interscholastic
football and swimming this school year.

Under the revised rules, the association's commissioner will grant
waivers on a case-by-case basis.

Federal special education law guarantees a free public education to
age 21 for students with disabilities. But the state boards that govern
interscholastic sports have been reluctant to allow older students to
compete.

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